With development of mobile communications and broadband wireless access technologies, mobile communications services and broadband wireless access services penetrate with each other. To satisfy requirements of larger mobile communications bandwidth and cope with challenges of broadband communications mobilization, a carrier aggregation (CA) technology is introduced into a mobile communications system.
In the CA technology, as one of important technologies in Long Term Evolution (LTE), larger bandwidth is obtained by aggregating multiple contiguous or non-contiguous component carriers (CC), to improve a system data transmission rate and a system throughput and also resolve a problem of a non-contiguous frequency spectrum of an operator.
The CA technology allows user equipment (UE) with a CA capability to use multiple aggregated carriers to perform data transmission. For UE with a CA capability, multiple aggregated CCs include a primary component carrier (PCC) (also referred to as a primary serving cell) and at least one secondary component carrier (SCC) (also referred to as a secondary serving cell). Each aggregated CC is used for data transmission of the UE. Therefore, cell radio network temporary identifiers (C-RNTI) used by the UE in all CCs need to keep consistent.
Currently, when the UE accesses the PCC, the PCC allocates a C-RNTI to the UE. When the SCC is configured or activated, the PCC notifies the SCC of the allocated C-RNTI, so that the SCC allocates the C-RNTI to the UE. However, meanwhile, the SCC may be used as a serving cell of another UE and allocate a C-RNTI to another UE. In this case, a C-RNTI conflict may easily occur. That is, the C-RNTI allocated by the PCC to the UE is allocated by the SCC to another UE.